Google's Autonomous Car Passes 2 Million Miles 97
Google said today it recently reached a huge milestone with its autonomous cars. Its cars have logged its two-millionth mile. To put into perspective, Google's self-driving cars have travelled roughly 300 years of human driving. The first million miles took Google six years, the second million came in at 16 months. Recode evaluates how far Google's self-driving cars have come. It notes that Google has been involved in 14 of such incidents, 13 of which were caused by other drivers.
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Yes but 14 accidents per 2 million miles is basically nothing
vs 5.5 million accidents over 3 trillion miles?
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=how+many+auto+accidents+per+year+in+the+us
http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_35.html
Nah, call me a Luddite all you want. We're still winning.
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I have to admit that I don't buy this. It's comparing normal car crashes reported to police versus google car crashes, which get included in the "14" statistic no matter how minor. Also, you could compare google car crashes with injuries (1 out of 14--too small for meaningful analysis) versus normal crashes with injuries (1 out of 4). Or you could compare the number of crashes caused by humans (almost all) versus those caused by the google car (1).
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I think that you should only count the 1 crash caused by the autonomous system. That's 1 crash due to a glitch out of 2 million miles.
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It's sad this was modded down to oblivion but it's tragically very true.
When evaluating who was at fault of an accident it's not who *caused* the accident, but who gets hit in most cases.
If someone's coming into your lane you and you change lanes and get a broadside it's your fault, as opposed to staying straight and praying your car stops in time and getting killed in the head on.
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Unfortunately most of the time people don't swerve to avoid the head on. It's on them so fast they're hit before they can react. I've seen a lot of those accidents on the road I commute to work on. It's a 4 lane highway with a accel/decel lane in the middle. No divider and traffic typically running between 65 and 75 during rush hours. Just a few months ago a man had a heart attack and swerved into oncoming traffic killing another man headed the opposite way. Witnesses said it was so fast that the vict
25 mph (Score:1)
As I understand it, the test cars don't go faster than 25mph. After so many miles of testing, will the car finally be ready to drive a bit faster?
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That's only in certain states.
This! (Score:3)
I hate these traffic blocking cars with a passion. I live in Mountain view and they are doing 15Mph around a curve which is not even posted as a curve (no danger) and 20-25 where the speed limit is posted at 35-45.
Oh, at first it tolerable. "awe, look at the cute little Google car." After sitting behind these things trying to drive around the city for over a year, I am considering getting an IPO for anti-Google Car chaff cannons. (soda cans full of shredded aluminum foil). I'm pretty sure that would be
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It's a grey area. If they are driving 10 under the posted limit it's not likely to get them ticketed although Cops are always curious if you stand out so they might get pulled over to see what's up. If it's a 50 zone and they're doing 25 that's obviously a problem and so would be considered impeding traffic.
This is great (Score:1)
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Like in the olden days when you raced with a mechanic on board....
Re: This is great (Score:2)
No, it's never zero drivers.
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Meh. (Score:1)
"Google's self-driving cars have travelled roughly 300 years of human driving."
Quantity != Quality. 300 years of human driving involves a lot more than driving 25 mph on suburban roads in ideal weather conditions.
2 Million miles on the odometer! (Score:4, Funny)
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12k miles is considered average yearly mileage that's about 32 miles a day so 2 million miles wouldn't be like 300 years of human driving. It's also not close to what I would drive in 300 years with a 40 mile one way commute 5-6 days a week plus all the other driving I was doing I was putting 35k to 40k on my vehicle each year for about 24 years I can safely say I've probably driven more than a millions miles. Thankfully, I don't commute like that any more.
32 billion miles of human driving per day (Score:2)
12k miles is considered average yearly mileage that's about 32 miles a day so 2 million miles wouldn't be like 300 years of human driving.
It's even worse when you consider that there are over 6 billion humans on the planet and just over a billion cars for them to drive so if the average is 32 miles a day that makes 32 billion miles of human driving every day. So perhaps the headline should read 5.4s of human driving or 167 years of one person driving.
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Good point... also it's only driven twice as far as me but been in 14 times as many accidents {that is if they are only counting moving accidents I've had cars hit while they were parked plenty of times}
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"...then the traditional taxi services."
Only when Google comes up with a version that speaks Urdu finds the special long way to get to each destination.
They work (Score:2)
I was just in Mountain View, and saw a Google car stopped at a traffic light. The light turned green, but a pedestrian jumped out in front of the car anyway. The Google car just sat there until the pedestrian left the crosswalk.
Re:They work (Score:5, Funny)
That's in the East Coast upgrade package. The New York package doesn't wait for the pedestrian.
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How impressive. Obstacle detection was definitely not a problem that was solved with toy cars decades ago.
Until we have independent third party testing, this is all vaporware. I don't know why people are so trusting of development of a product that zero companies have been willing to demonstrate outside highly controlled test conditions.
Uh, editors? (Score:5, Insightful)
14 of _which_ such incidents? I mean, i can make a pretty good guess, but if i were to read the blurb without any context i might think this is the 14th time Google has passed a million miles or something.
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You're so picky, with the whole wanting clear unambiguous writing thing...
Me, I like a good mystery!
Re:Not quite (Score:4, Insightful)
And, that 2 million miles has mostly been on the same few miles of carefully mapped roads. Autonomous cars are a great idea, but, they need to demonstrate that they can handle more that the occasional stray pedestrian. They need to demonstrate the ability to drive on unfamiliar roads and roads with unexpected barriers (road construction that wasn't there yesterday) as well as other vehicles that behave in unexpected (and often illegal) ways.
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And, that 2 million miles has mostly been on the same few miles of carefully mapped roads. Autonomous cars are a great idea, but, they need to demonstrate that they can handle more that the occasional stray pedestrian. They need to demonstrate the ability to drive on unfamiliar roads and roads with unexpected barriers (road construction that wasn't there yesterday) as well as other vehicles that behave in unexpected (and often illegal) ways.
Drive around long enough and you will meet most kinds of crazy, even if you ask a truck driver that's hauled cargo the same route the last ten years. As for the rest, it's not that big a blocker as you might think. Imagine an autonomous taxi with a limited coverage area, it doesn't have to understand the road to your mountain cabin. How about an autonomous shuttle service from the airport to near-by hotels? A hop-on hop-off tourist bus driving the same round over and over? There's a lot of potential even fo
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Google's cars can cope with the unexpected. A few years ago they showed some detail of how they handle roadworks, and unexpected/illegal behaviour by other drivers and pedestrians has been assumed from day one.
The cars use GPS for navigation and supplementary data, but not for primary driving functions. For that they use lidar and cameras that can read signs and interpret things like cones marking off roadworks (so they don't try to simply drive between cones etc.)
A different perspective... (Score:5, Interesting)
Tesla has collected over a billion miles of driving data (about 180 million on autopilot) and adds a million miles every 10 hours.
Bad Comparison! (Score:2)
That's NOT an accurate comparison! In fact you cannot compare the two. The google system lets you pick a destination and the car will drive you there without intervention. Many owners who have tested Telsa's system have said you need to pay attention to what it's doing or you could potentially die like that one driver who sadly trusted it enough to watch a movie. The systems are so different on levels of automation it'd be like saying there's more miles on cruise control. Read up and learn the differen
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Re:Bad Comparison! (Score:4, Interesting)
I do realize that the Google cars have a higher level of automated driving, more sensors, etc. (and also some severe limitations on speed, locations, weather, etc.).
However, the object is to collect as much driving data as possible to see how the car behaves in different situations. In that case, total distance matters and Tesla is way ahead of anyone else. Tesla cars collect data even when AP is not switched on which is valuable to see how a human driver handles various road environments.
This highlights a fundamental difference between Google and Tesla. Google is approaching the problem from the point of view that they have to develop a complete system that does everything. Tesla is taking an incremental approach by introducing a low level of autonomous driving with human supervision and then letting the collected data drive continuous improvements. We'll see which approach is best as time goes on.
Re: Bad Comparison! (Score:1)
At a certain point, Tesla's data will be less useful. Cars taking the same path down the same highway will not yield much 'experience'. How many of those miles were just one car doing exactly what the one before it did?
Re: Bad Comparison! (Score:2)
You need multiple people doing the same thing on the same road to know the right way to do it. Then you can throw out the outliers.
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So what you are saying is that Tesla out-Googled Google on the data collection front. And Tesla don't even give you the car for free!
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So Tesla is sorta like the Google of the automotive world?
Re: A different perspective... (Score:2)
Level 5? Not even close.
Re: A different perspective... (Score:2)
It's all about the data. More data is better data. Other cars don't collect driving data (camera, radar, GPS, throttle, brakes,etc.). Tesla collects this and sends it in real time.
the case for driverless cars everywhere? (Score:2)
So, if I get this right, those Google cars cause about 0.5 accidents per 1M miles? If so, that equates to about 1.5M traffic accidents per year in the US if you replaced every car with a driverless model (assuming all rates are constant, of course). If that seems like a big number, Americans currently drive about 3 trillion miles per year and get into about 5.5 million traffic accidents. If I did the math right, driverless cars will result in about 2/3 fewer accidents per year than we experience now. Should
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Because I think we know what the outcome would be.
Here's the latest activity report: https://static.googleuserconte... [googleusercontent.com]
Note that the car has only been in autonomous mode approximately 60% of the time. Which is about the amount of time you can spend not paying attention when driving a car manually. Basically, we've finally gotten a computer to do what humans can do with spare cycles.
More non-news to promote an agenda, that's all.
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Note that the car has only been in autonomous mode approximately 60% of the time. Which is about the amount of time you can spend not paying attention when driving a car manually. Basically, we've finally gotten a computer to do what humans can do with spare cycles.
From your linked report it's more like 74% lately:
In August alone, our fleet of 58 vehicles traveled a record monthly total of 170,000 miles; of those, 126,000 miles were driven autonomously (i.e. the car was fully in control).
This might be a PR blurb, but it looks like they try to avoid empty miles:
We began testing on highways seven years ago, but today most of our miles are on surface streets. While it may be easier to rack up many more miles on highways through driver assist features like cruise control, creating a truly autonomous car requires advanced driving skills in order to master the complexity of neighborhoods
If they keep driving around downtown there's not really that long between every time they need to take an action, it would be interesting to see how often/long the manual segments are. If it's the driver constantly "saving" the car via small interactions, or if it's more like driving a round to let the car collect sensor data and traffic patterns before making a "live" run. It seems un
Re: the case for driverless cars everywhere? (Score:2)
They always 100% of the time have 1 driver.
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Should we all welcome our autonomous vehicle overlords now?
As soon you figure out how to buy every American a $100K vehicle and also have automation drive safely on its own.
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So, if I get this right, those Google cars cause about 0.5 accidents per 1M miles? If so, that equates to about 1.5M traffic accidents per year in the US if you replaced every car with a driverless model (assuming all rates are constant, of course). If that seems like a big number, Americans currently drive about 3 trillion miles per year and get into about 5.5 million traffic accidents. If I did the math right, driverless cars will result in about 2/3 fewer accidents per year than we experience now. Should we all welcome our autonomous vehicle overlords now?
http://www.usacoverage.com/aut... [usacoverage.com]
http://www.afdc.energy.gov/dat... [energy.gov]
Sure if you want to drive in circles around Mountain View at half the posted speed limit.
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Don't put them on I-294 or any other IL tollway (Score:2)
Don't put them on I-294 or any other IL tollway no one does the 55 or even the 45 work zone
Always the other guy's fault (Score:1)
So they automated politicians also?
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So they automated politicians also?
They didn't need to, they've been coin-operated for a while
Re:Don't care; Do not want. (Score:5, Funny)
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Oh, please. What's next? You going to accuse me of never using an elevator or escalator, too? We are discussing automobiles.
Yawn (Score:2)
300 human years? (Score:2)
My Neighborhood is full of them in AZ (Score:2)
Those second million might have happened in my neighborhood in Chandler, AZ. for the past year at least, we've had swarms of them driving around our neighborhood streets at all times of the day and night, thought not late night that I'm aware of (ie mid-5 am, as a linux lead for several large international companies, I get more done at night so I'm up working those hours when no one annoys me with chats etc). At times we've seen 6 driving through our streets all in a line. Driving from pickup up dinner and
They're forgetting something... (Score:1)
This doesn't count all of the times that the human had to take over because the car *would* have caused an accident.